A linguistic analysis of persuasive language used on Jordanian advertisements in social media

The current study aims to explore the linguistic persuasive linguistic devices used in Jordanian online advertising discourse. It aims to recognize the most frequent linguistic strategies that affect the buying behavior of Jordanian costumers. The study employed a quantitative and qualitative approach to analyze 271 Jordanian advertisements collected from Facebook and Instagram between January and April 2025. The linguistic features of persuasive language were classified using Kannan and Tyagi (2013) framework. The results of the study identify 14 linguistic features used in the compiled data. Among these features, it was found that four linguistic persuasive devices were dominant, namely colloquial language, imperatives, long noun phrases and short sentences. On the contrary, the findings revealed that alliteration, hyperbole, rhyme and neologisms were the least dominant features. This indicates that Jordanian advisers favor the linguistic features that mirror the values and conventions of online communication and Jordanian culture such as solidarity, intimacy, familiarity and informality. The study provides different recommendations for marketers, advisers and educators to adopt cultural values in designing online advertisements.